I have only played about 20 minutes of it so far, but I like it. The amount of damage that can be done to the surrounding surfaces is great (is it called model damage?)...you can shoot out the window of a building to get into it....and really blow stuff up....and it doesn't regenerate itself during the course of the match.

It is a bit unrealistic in the speed that things happen...sort of like COD...much too fast....and I am getting a good deal of lag, which may just be the Beta servers, but my ping is great....FPS takes a nosedive from time to time though......on BF3 I can get FPS rates over 100, and never lag.
I am running the recommended graphics card, too.

Apparently, they are only allowing 1 map to play so far, which means by the time of release, it will be played out!

I don't think I would go bigger than a 32 man server...it just gets crazy with 64 players.....too much run-n-gun, and bunny hoppers.....

quick update.....right now, the game is so laggy it is almost impossible to play...even with settings turned down. I do not know if it is because of the Beta servers, or of the demands of the game....my PC has the recommended video card, as well as 12 gigs of ram, running with i7 cpu (granted, not the fastest cpu, but pretty damn fast). I am also playing servers where I am getting far less than 100 ping....most of them in the 30s....

OK...Now that I have played a bit more....this game is exactly why we went to RO2 and RS in the first place.......it is full of run-n-gunners, bunny hoppers, and spawn campers. The lag seems a bit less tonight, but nonetheless...still there.
Graphically, it is pretty. The model damage excellent.
The MP game......nothing more than we've seen before in all the COD BS out there.....

BF3 for 20 bucks and all the expansion packs is cool......but 70 for this? I wonder if I can get a refund..................????

I do agree about the rambo-ing and the hopping and the totally unrealistic gameplay elements it has.. It's somewhat fine if you get 'in the spirit' of it, but it's not a way that I normally play.. So it's gonna take some getting used to.

It is a really good looking game, it looks awesome, it sounds awesome, the map(s) is/are extremely well made, the destruction that you can afflict upon it is superb. I love that. And it runs really well on my older pc too, which surprised the heck outta me. I can even run it on high settings.

But most of the people that play, are playing CoD style.... and the gameplay elements they are offered to go totally unrealistically rambo-ing with, are not my favorite aspects of the game. I would like to see a more hardcore approach, where vehicles can't be entered and exited at will but where you stick to that role once you choose it.. no magical parachutes for everyone.. no automatic regeneration of wounded, no magical repairs... way more realistic weapon's damage... not 'any of that easy stuff'... and let's not even get started on unlocks and how rediculously unbalanced some matches can be for those without them..

But, having said that, if I flick the 'I like realistic warfare games' switch in my head and I go on a BF3 map that is large and open and not too busy, there's some real good fun to be had. I am loving maps like Kaspian and Firestorm and such. And specially when you start playing as a squad, as a team. With proper communication, and if you also have some of the more important unlocks to even the playing field and compliment each other's skills with in the squad/team, then it's really enjoyable.

But the BF4 Beta only has the one map so far, and it's urban, and I don't much like the city style maps anyway, those are the ones that have the most potential for CoD type gameplay. It should be much better on the bigger flying type maps, though.. people would still bunny hop or such, but with more open spaces, there's less 'dumb running around' going on.

I'm just going to have to keep flipping that switch a lot and then compensate with a bit more ArmA here and there.

another thing I have noticed that I find annoying, is the ability to reload while at a full run....

I can deal with the run-n-gun and hoppers, but the spawn campers piss me off....no wonder why they rank up so quickly!

It is obvious that Origin is going for the COD crowd, not the serious gamers...

BF3 runs just fine on my PC on full settings, and is fun to play, but I am lagging like crap with the beta......I can shoot at someone point blank and not hit them, while they fire a distance shot at me, and I am dead. Some of these folks must play 24/7 to rank up like they have, too.

I am having a hard time staying interested long enough to finish a round, and then I lose whatever points I may have gained!

While I doubt it will happen, it would be nice when the final game is released, that everyone's rank drops back to nothing...this way, those that buy the game at release, will have half a flippin chance!

OK, I managed to download the beta drivers for Geforce cards...(after 5 tries), and it seems to have smoothed out the lag....to a degree. My fps runs around 30/40s, which is low, but it is consistent...and almost smooth enough(the human eye cannot see much above 60 FPS anyways). The inability to hit someone right in front of me still exists...yet they seem to blast the crap outta me every feckin time.

Perhaps it is the map they are running, but I like BF3 a whole lot better so far.

True in a sense, but on the other hand this close to a full release these types of problems are pretty substantial.. too substantial to not have come up in in-house testing already, let alone a closed beta. Specially with the serious performance issues that a lot of users are having, even with high end machines that should make light work of this game. How could that have escaped them if their team of testers was big enough?

That sort of core issue should have been caught and fixed well before any open beta if you have your stuff together as a developer, period. Certainly for a company that big, with so many resources. But it's not the first time it went like this with this series, of course. Nothing new there.

By the time they start charging real money you can't really hide behind a lot of ongoing game development much anymore, and when you are charging an extra ammount of money for people to be part of your open beta, then those people should be able to at least run the game properly, and actually play it to get their money's worth, if they have the recommended hardware. There's always going to be people with 'bad luck', but the ammount of complaints I've read about it so far, is just too much to just call them the 'unlucky few'.

It's easy enough to say 'it's a beta' whenever big mistakes obviously have been made, but it's really not like that anymore in this day and age. These days the open betas are mainly just a marketing tool, to get more people to spend the extra 10 bucks on it, to lure people in under the guise of exclusivity, and make a bit more money, whilst using them as guinneapigs. They should give those people a discount on the full game, not charge them extra, for the help they are providing.

It's just basically sloppy development when SO many people report these performance problems. And not enough testing beforehand. It's that simple. They want the biggest return on their investment, so they normally push releases and cut back on in-house testing, and the customer has become the quality control these days. And somehow, that's not quite right, but we all accept it and pay top dollar for what is basically unfinished software. I'm not just talking about BF or EA or Dice, but developers in general are playing by these new rules these days.

(10-07-2013 04:03 AM)Mad_Fred Wrote: True in a sense, but on the other hand this close to a full release these types of problems are pretty substantial.. too substantial to not have come up in in-house testing already, let alone a closed beta. Specially with the serious performance issues that a lot of users are having, even with high end machines that should make light work of this game. How could that have escaped them if their team of testers was big enough?

That sort of core issue should have been caught and fixed well before any open beta if you have your stuff together as a developer, period. Certainly for a company that big, with so many resources. But it's not the first time it went like this with this series, of course. Nothing new there.

By the time they start charging real money you can't really hide behind a lot of ongoing game development much anymore, and when you are charging an extra ammount of money for people to be part of your open beta, then those people should be able to at least run the game properly, and actually play it to get their money's worth, if they have the recommended hardware. There's always going to be people with 'bad luck', but the ammount of complaints I've read about it so far, is just too much to just call them the 'unlucky few'.

It's easy enough to say 'it's a beta' whenever big mistakes obviously have been made, but it's really not like that anymore in this day and age. These days the open betas are mainly just a marketing tool, to get more people to spend the extra 10 bucks on it, to lure people in under the guise of exclusivity, and make a bit more money, whilst using them as guinneapigs. They should give those people a discount on the full game, not charge them extra, for the help they are providing.

It's just basically sloppy development when SO many people report these performance problems. And not enough testing beforehand. It's that simple. They want the biggest return on their investment, so they normally push releases and cut back on in-house testing, and the customer has become the quality control these days. And somehow, that's not quite right, but we all accept it and pay top dollar for what is basically unfinished software. I'm not just talking about BF or EA or Dice, but developers in general are playing by these new rules these days.

Progression, it is called, I think.

No one is paying to play the Open Beta. Anyone can play it without spending a dime. The closed beta was exclusive for those that bought MOH, BF3 Premium and pre-ordered BF4. The exclusive beta lasted 3 days.
A game of this magnitude requires a lot of resources, not just from the clients but from the networking point of view. I have seen this with BF2, BFBC2, BF3 and now BF4. Nothing new here. It's been the same every time and all the prior games played smooth after a few patches. No developers can test the game "in-house" and even come close to the load we put on the servers and Master Server. Loading/stressing the game/servers during the beta is part of the routine

Note: BTW, we aren't that close to full release. It's over 3 weeks away

A game of this magnitude.. errm, well it's just an fps. It can look at fancy as it likes and sure it's nice, but it's not that big or that elaborate on the actual software side of things. Not compared to some of the simulation games out there that do so much more. The only thing that's really very big, is the number of players since it's a very popular series, granted. And that means more people with potential problems, since there are many more variations in hardware and software that people run, but only relatively speaking to an extend.

With all the servers that all the hosts already run for all these other games out there, and all the experience the hosting companies have and DICE has from the previous games in the series, it's not like it's revolutionary though on the network side of things either, or a grey area that they know nothing about. Sure they can't test it inhouse, to the fullest, that's impossible.

But I'm not really talking about the network side of things though I grant them that of course... but indeed it's 3-4 weeks before release, and there is a major issue with game performance for so many people - problems that basically have nothing do to with MP or server load - well that is just a sign of sloppy work no matter how you look at it. That should not have slipped through the cracks if you ask me. And a competent developer certainly should not have been surprised by that, that has nothing to do with stress testing any server. Not when this many people have those issues.

But as you say, all the BF games have launched buggy as hell and in need for immediate patching, so at least they stay in character.

As for that open/closed beta.. yeah now that I look at it again, you are right..and that means that I've been grossely mislead when I ordered the digital deluxe version, I now see.. Now, I only have seen it on the Dutch website and I assume it's all the same anyway, but nowhere did they mention that it was only a few days of exclusive beta, back there when I ordered it. The normal edition also gave the first DLC as bonus when pre-ordering, just like the DD, but that was the only thing that it had checked in the list of features, compared to the Digital Deluxe for me, and only the DD edition said that it gave access to the beta, it did not mention anything but the date it would start, and the normal one did not have that option checked at all, or I would have gone for that, because I did not care for those battlepacks or that BF3 unlock stuff anyway... I wanted to play BF4 in beta. All/most of BF4 in it's beta stage, which is what normally is the case when games that I have played in open beta do this and also is how they made it look. Not just to have a 3 day headstart on a mere one-map free demo, which is what this is and nothing more.

Oh well.. not the first time EA advertised in a misleading way, anyway.